Hermaneutics, a column by Herman Manson (@marklives) Flames roared impressively, smoke spilled over the stage and kids screamed. I had just been reading their naively thankful tweets to their educational institutions, such as the AAA School of Advertising, expressing eternal gratitude for securing them seats IN THE FRONT ROW!! of the auditorium at The Loerie Awards, and I had been wondering what fate — and the ad industry — would have in store for them… Welcome to the biz, kiddos.
The ad industry gathered in Cape Town this past weekend, starting on Friday evening, 20 September 2013, with the Pendoring Awards [winners list] and continuing through Saturday and Sunday evenings with The Loerie Awards [Loeries 2013 — all winners], to celebrate and award its creative output of the past year.
Quick turn-around
The Loerie Awards evening certainly impressed with its quick turn-around and general slickness. I think the event organisers pulled the whole thing off in less than two-and-a-half hours on each of the two evenings. Gone seem the days when we huddled for untold hours on the world’s most uncomfortable seats while people in the world’s most unfashionable hats (something apparently killed off, thankfully, by our own Louise Marsland) spent forever dry-humping and not quite managing to get on stage (the sooner they get there, the sooner they can bugger off again). It just about makes paying for your own pre-drinks worthwhile.
Loeries CEO Andrew Human, speechless for once (he had lost his voice at some stage pre-event), seemed happy with the end result, as did most of the attendees. A big contributing factor to reducing the monotony usually associated with award show events was that ads were only flighted once on the AV screens, so the audience did not have to sit through repeat after repeat (a handy tip offered by MarkLives in our overview last year. Looks like we are worth having around, after all).
Poked fun
Xolisa Dyeshana, ECD at Joe Public and chairperson of the Loeries , proved once again to be the most unassumingly charming gent in adland with a funny opening speech in which he poked fun at all sorts of agency and client stereotypes — a (fake) pitch to Metrorail for a localised version of the globally awarded ‘Dumb ways to die‘ campaign.
Best #Loeries Chairman speech ever @XolisaDyeshana, singing Cannes winner ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ SA-style
— Louise Marsland (@Louise_Marsland) September 21, 2013
The Saturday night MC duo, Joey Rasdien and Dineo Moeketsi, was smooth but not terribly entertaining. Nobody seemed to miss the international has-been celebs the organisers have been subjecting us to over the last few years. Only thing to miss about MC Hammer was funny tweets on the #loeries hashtag.
Grands Prix
Saturday evening saw two Grands Prix awarded, one a worthy win by Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town for Volkswagen’s “Street Quest” (in the Digital & Interactive — Social Media category). The second, for Engen’s “Fire Blanket Calendar” campaign by Draftfcb (in the Alternative Media & Field Marketing category), might prove a more controversial decision.
It goes, I suppose, to the essence of what we are awarding as an industry. If it is great creative ideas, then by all means, this is one, and worthy of the recognition. If it’s about ideas and results…
Watching the video presenting the aims of the fire blanket campaign, it sounds as if Engen, a leading supplier of paraffin (which is widely used by South African shack dwellers for heat and light), hopes to “affect real change” (to quote the video) in fighting fires started accidentally through use of this product.
The answer
For Draftfcb, the answer was to change the calendars distributed by Engen to its customers — and which would not be put away and so be out of reach in an emergency, hanging on the wall as it does — into fire retardant fire blankets. The idea is that, if you can suffocate the fire when and where it starts, you can save not just one household but many, or even a whole community. It’s a brilliant insight.
“Hopefully this year will be better for residents of South Africa’s informal settlements,” the video presentation concludes.
So how many of these fire calendars were made and distributed to residents inside informal settlements? Several hundred, says the agency. It just wasn’t cost effective.
And the insight, to stop a fire at its source, would require every residence in the community where it is distributed to have one, surely, for it to be effective and achieve the clients core brief — “affecting real change” and preventing shack fires.
If the brief said affect real change, and you are talking about 1.2 million households in settlements at risk, several hundred fire blankets isn’t that.
Back to the Pendorings
Before we get to the Sunday night Loeries event, let’s step back one night to Friday evening and the Pendoring Awards.
Pendoring has come a long way in 19 years. From what felt quite isolationist and reactive, it is emerging as a uniquely South African take on creative awards, celebrating our diversity and talking to people in their home tongue, rather than just English. It’s going to keep on growing in importance if it continues on its path to celebrating Truly South African, rather than simply Afrikaans.
It’s a newfound dynamism that was not adequately reflected in the opening act of the awards ceremony, which threw the audience face first into the ’80s with Joseph Clark somehow managing to push covers of Skipsop, Queen and Michael Jackson into one performance. One delegate felt compelled to tweet “Josh from Nickelback is on stage with Joseph Clark, performing “I Want It All”. I feel like I took shrooms.”
Josh from Nickelback is on stage with Joseph Clark, performing “I Want It All”. I feel like I took shrooms. #pendoring
— Jabulani (@papa_action) September 20, 2013
Look, the event was diverse and culturally mixed, and kudos to the organisers in this regard, but the opening act sets the scene for the rest of the evening and it was a hard slog recovering from the Clark culture shock. Emo Adams came close, and would have been great had he opened.
Ongoing evolution
Change has already happened in terms of the actual work being awarded — now the event, PR and marketing for the Pendoring Awards need to catch up with its ongoing evolution.
Only eight gold and 26 silver trophies were awarded as part of a mission to impress upon the Creative Circle that the Pendoring judging criteria are strict and on par with the Loeries.
Many of the judges, counting some of the best regarded creative directors in the country amongst them, pointed to the continued failure of the Creative Circle to count the Pendoring Awards within its points system, and demanded the issue be addressed with some urgency.
The general feeling is that this point has been made, underscored and filled out in triplicate, and it looks as if the industry is moving much faster than the Creative Circle, which is tied into knots with the Loeries, in any case. Tony Koenderman does a more sophisticated and credible points ranking — one which happens to include the Pendoring Awards — if you want to be on a ‘points’ list, maybe that is the one to be on then.
Big winners
The big winners on the night were the Draftfcb Johannesburg radio campaign Taai Oumas, Taai Tieners, Taai Meisies, done for Toyota, and Black River F.C. for its Nando’s TV-campaign titled Athletes, Anthem, Izikhothane.
Joe Public also did well for itself, and Ogilvy Johannesburg, TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg and Draftfcb Cape Town all took gold.
Loeries on Sunday
Back to Sunday and The Loerie Awards. No fireworks, no screaming kids; just MC John Vlismas, who did a pretty good impression of both, actually. Tats, leather, possibly drugs and lots of bad behaviour had a couple of old-timers reminiscing about the ‘old’ advertising days and Margate (where the Loeries were held at one stage) with some fondness.
John Vlismas on making a sex tape with Dineo “let’s make beautiful colored children!? C’mon, empower my babies!” Dead dead dead! #loeries
— Justin Jacobie (@ThisJustinGuy) September 22, 2013
The big winner was MTN’s “The Everywhere Library” Media Innovation entry, by MetropolitanRepublic. It really is a remarkable campaign that makes good in the community and does well for the brand. It’s a combination any brand should be taking with if expanding into the rest of the continent.
Frank.net’s “Death Doesn’t Have To Try Very Hard” Radio Campaign by FoxP2 took the other Grand Prix awarded on the night. It was another worthy win for the agency.
Hall of Fame
Graham Warsop, founder and chairman of The Jupiter Drawing Room South Africa, was inducted into the Loeries Hall of Fame for his outstanding contribution to the South African and global advertising industry.
‘Africa Middle East’
There were some interesting work from agencies outside South Africa in the fast-growing ‘Africa Middle East’ category. The three pieces that really stood out included the brilliant “The Everywhere Library” for MTN by MetropolitanRepublic, ‘On the job interview‘ by Ogilvy Africa (see below) and ‘Land Rover: Bookshelf‘ by Advantage Y&R.
Other worthy winners
In other categories across the two evenings, other worthy (bronze, silver and gold) winners included TV ads Sh-Boom from TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg for Standard Bank, and ‘Boxer‘ by OwenKessel for Amstel Lager. Music video ‘Fatty Boom Boom‘ by Egg Films won for Die Antwoord (in the TV & Cinema Commercials – above 90s category).
‘Roachville‘ was a worthy win for Doom Fogger and agency TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg. ‘Selfies‘ from Lowe + Partners Cape Town, for Independent Newspapers, stood out in the Newspaper category. ‘Hope Soap‘ for Safety Lab and Blikkiesdorp4Hope, by Y&R South Africa, encouraged kids to get into the habit of washing their hands by placing toys inside bars of soap.
Johannesburg Zoo’s Tweeting Honey Badger by Draftfcb was inspired and generated international media interest. Finally, ‘The other side of war‘ for Ditsong Naitonal Museum of Military History by Ireland-Davenport stood out in the posters category — in spite of only taking home a bronze for the agency.
All images supplied by: Loeries
— Hermaneutics is a column by MarkLives.com editor Herman Manson. It indicates opinion as much as reporting.